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essential position of Advaita and be the key texts which declare that all dualities are provisional and ultimately superseded, they stand in stark simplicity over against the rich variety of statements found in any given upanisad. |
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As such, the great sayings function analogously to the distinction between Brahman with qualities and without qualities; for here too the point is not to do away with the rest of the Text, but to grade and qualify the way the rest of the upanisads are to be read. The effect of the great sayings is perhaps greater, because not only are they concentrated, but they are also paradoxical claims which jar readers by pointing to a truth which they cannot easily locate in ordinary experience. A great saying such as "You are that" (tat tvam asi) upsets our reading of the upanisads because, in the Advaita reading, it seems to equate two things that ought not to be equated: the phenomenal, finite self (tvam) and Brahman (tat).It puzzles the reader, demanding an equation without any evident correlate or evident referent in the world, or even in the upanisadic texts, for that matter, which for the most part seem directed to a reader who, however estimable, is less than the eternally one, the Self. It is a truth which has no evident reference or confirmation in the world of ordinary experience. Made uncomfortable with what she or he previously took for granted and with prior readings of the upanisads themselves, the reader is made to seek a stance in which nonduality can be perceived as true; and the search for this requires a rereading of the rest of the given upanisad, in light of its most contentious and difficult portion, its great saying. |
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Persistent attention to these initially implausible yet demanding great sayings impels the reader gradually into another frame of reference, where what was hitherto unexpected and without referent begins to make sense. Compelled upon the reader by the paradox of the great saying and the consequent reappraisal of the whole of each upanisad, this elusive and never forthrightly demarcated new locationa new perspective on reading, a point of realization where notions of "I" and "Brahman" are revisedis where Advaita can be properly said to occur, where there is operative that higher grammar according to which the great sayings now make sense. The truth of Advaita |
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